Modern commercial boxed software products are typically delivered as physical media that contains the software code, and an alphanumeric product key. It is common for a software vendor to require its products complete an “activation” process before the full rights associated with the software are enabled for a specific user and/or computer.
The activation process typically involves the transmission of the product key, along with some information identifying the user and/or computer, to an activation clearinghouse (typically the software vendor, but it may be a third party). The software vendor responds with an authorization code enabling access to the rights associated with the software. The software is then licensed.
When software is of significant value, the incentive to produce counterfeit product keys is high. Due to the nature of software, it can be challenging to identify and disallow counterfeits. In an effort to achieve this, the technology applied to product keys has advanced in recent years to include short digital signatures which attempt to prove that the serial number is legitimate.
However, the effectiveness of product keys can only be measured in terms of the time required to fabricate a counterfeit key given knowledge of the system. The advances in CPU processing power are increasingly rendering current techniques ineffective because “key generation” tools exist which can create counterfeit keys based on existing technology within hours or even minutes.
An adequate solution to this problem has eluded those skilled in the art, until now.